08-21-2020, 01:44 AM
Sitcoms will reflect the time; Parks and Recreation is obviously very different from The Dick Van Dyke Show, All in the Family, or Taxi.
...One may notice tendencies for shows to vanish. The variety shows that were once so popular have disappeared; are they out of style or are there 'contract problems'? CBS had a big purge of escapist, often rural-themed (or at least "hayseed-themed") sitcoms and dramas such as Green Acres, Mayberry RFD, Petticoat Junction, Gomer Pyle USMC, and The Beverly Hillbillies; CBS must have had an older but large audience that liked those shows... a bit or rural nostalgia for people troubled by the Boom Awakening? The problem with such shows was that their audience skewed old.
Advertisers generally consider a viewer worthless if over 48. By then one's customer preferences are typically set unless one is so capricious that one will never develop any brand-name loyalty. The objective in broadcast television is to promote brand-name loyalty, which explains why a late teen working in a fast-food place for a near-minimum wage is a better audience than a retired schoolteacher or accountant, even if the retiree is well off.
The idea behind series television was to get people to watch enough of a TV program to get the person in position to watch an ad for... whatever. In the old days, tobacco products were accepted advertising. That is over. In the early days a program was "brought to you" by a sponsor... and the sponsor's product might appear on the set as a reminder (thus "Jethro Clampett" eating a bowl of Kellogg's Corn Flakes during The Beverly Hillbillies. If Sears was the sponsor, then you might see a Sears catalog or a visit to a Sears store might at some time be a part of a plot line. Alcohol was long tricky, and until the 1970's smoking wasn't.
Game shows in prime time were once common... yuck! They were easy and inexpensive to produce. I recall contestants getting a carton of cigarettes from the sponsor... that dates the practice. But even in daytime TV, the so-called washday weepers once daytime staples on ABC, CBS, and NBC, have themselves vanished. Note also that one pattern that separated Boomers from X and Millennial youth is the disappearance of locally-produced kid-variety shows that had some emcee (who could have been styled as a cowboy or some other kid's hero) who introduced some cartoons, maybe some ancient comic serials, and a little video fun... and don't forget Captain Kangaroo, a network staple on CBS. X and Millennials never got that, as TV stations and networks went away from that.
Television is often said to have been commonplace starting in 1949, at least when it took the three-network format that prevails today (FoX is a strong fourth network, and sometimes second or third, but it does not yet produce daytime programming). We are fairly close to having a full eighty-year cycle of TV programming, having gone from the early part of the American High to what might be the latter part of the Crisis of 2020. No, I do not expect Bowling for Dollars to return to prime-time TV.
...One may notice tendencies for shows to vanish. The variety shows that were once so popular have disappeared; are they out of style or are there 'contract problems'? CBS had a big purge of escapist, often rural-themed (or at least "hayseed-themed") sitcoms and dramas such as Green Acres, Mayberry RFD, Petticoat Junction, Gomer Pyle USMC, and The Beverly Hillbillies; CBS must have had an older but large audience that liked those shows... a bit or rural nostalgia for people troubled by the Boom Awakening? The problem with such shows was that their audience skewed old.
Advertisers generally consider a viewer worthless if over 48. By then one's customer preferences are typically set unless one is so capricious that one will never develop any brand-name loyalty. The objective in broadcast television is to promote brand-name loyalty, which explains why a late teen working in a fast-food place for a near-minimum wage is a better audience than a retired schoolteacher or accountant, even if the retiree is well off.
The idea behind series television was to get people to watch enough of a TV program to get the person in position to watch an ad for... whatever. In the old days, tobacco products were accepted advertising. That is over. In the early days a program was "brought to you" by a sponsor... and the sponsor's product might appear on the set as a reminder (thus "Jethro Clampett" eating a bowl of Kellogg's Corn Flakes during The Beverly Hillbillies. If Sears was the sponsor, then you might see a Sears catalog or a visit to a Sears store might at some time be a part of a plot line. Alcohol was long tricky, and until the 1970's smoking wasn't.
Game shows in prime time were once common... yuck! They were easy and inexpensive to produce. I recall contestants getting a carton of cigarettes from the sponsor... that dates the practice. But even in daytime TV, the so-called washday weepers once daytime staples on ABC, CBS, and NBC, have themselves vanished. Note also that one pattern that separated Boomers from X and Millennial youth is the disappearance of locally-produced kid-variety shows that had some emcee (who could have been styled as a cowboy or some other kid's hero) who introduced some cartoons, maybe some ancient comic serials, and a little video fun... and don't forget Captain Kangaroo, a network staple on CBS. X and Millennials never got that, as TV stations and networks went away from that.
Television is often said to have been commonplace starting in 1949, at least when it took the three-network format that prevails today (FoX is a strong fourth network, and sometimes second or third, but it does not yet produce daytime programming). We are fairly close to having a full eighty-year cycle of TV programming, having gone from the early part of the American High to what might be the latter part of the Crisis of 2020. No, I do not expect Bowling for Dollars to return to prime-time TV.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.